Barbara Hershey

Barbara Hershey
Hershey in 2016
Born
Barbara Lynn Herzstein

(1948-02-05) February 5, 1948 (age 76)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Other namesBarbara Seagull
OccupationActress
Years active1965–present
Spouse
Stephen Douglas
(m. 1992; div. 1993)
Partner(s)David Carradine (1968–1975)
Naveen Andrews (1998–2009)
Children1

Barbara Lynn Herzstein, better known as Barbara Hershey (born February 5, 1948), is an American actress. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema in several genres, including westerns and comedies. She began acting at age 17 in 1965 but did not achieve widespread critical acclaim until the 1980s. By that time, the Chicago Tribune referred to her as "one of America's finest actresses".

Hershey won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries/TV Film for her role in A Killing in a Small Town (1990). She received Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and for her role in The Portrait of a Lady (1996). For the latter film, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has won two Best Actress awards at the Cannes Film Festival for her roles in Shy People (1987) and A World Apart (1988). She was featured in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), for which she was nominated for the British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress and Garry Marshall's melodrama Beaches (1988), and she earned a second British Academy Film Award nomination for Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010).

Establishing a reputation early in her career as a hippie, Hershey experienced conflict between her personal life and her acting goals. Her career suffered a decline during a six-year relationship with actor David Carradine, with whom she had a child. She experimented with a change in stage name to Barbara Seagull. During this time, her personal life was highly publicized and ridiculed. Her acting career was not well established until she separated from Carradine and changed her stage name back to Hershey. In 1990, later in her career, it was reported that she began to keep her personal life private.

Early life

Barbara Lynn Herzstein was born in Hollywood, the daughter of Arnold Nathan Herzstein, a horse-racing columnist, and Melrose Herzstein (née Moore). Her father's parents were Jewish emigrants from Hungary and Russia, while her mother, a native of Arkansas, was a Presbyterian of Scots-Irish descent.

The youngest of three children, Barbara always wanted to be an actress, and her family nicknamed her "Sarah Bernhardt". She was shy in school and so quiet that people thought she was deaf. By the age of ten, she proved herself to be an "A" student. Her high-school drama coach helped her find an agent, and in 1965, at age 17, she landed a role on Sally Field's television series Gidget. Barbara said that she found Field to be very supportive of her in her first acting role. According to The New York Times All Movie Guide, Barbara graduated from Hollywood High School in 1966, but David Carradine, in his autobiography, said she dropped out of high school after she began acting.

Career

1960s

Hershey and Mark Slade in the TV western The High Chaparral (1968)

Hershey's acting debut, three episodes of Gidget, was followed by the short-lived television series The Monroes (1966), which also featured Michael Anderson, Jr. By this point, she had adopted the stage name "Barbara Hershey". Although Hershey said the series helped her career, she expressed some frustration with her role, saying: "One week I was strong, the next, weak". While on the series, Hershey garnered several other roles, including one in Doris Day's final feature film, With Six You Get Eggroll.

In 1968, Hershey worked in the 1969 Glenn Ford Western Heaven with a Gun. On the set, she met and began a romantic relationship with actor David Carradine, who later starred in the television series Kung Fu (see Personal life). In the same year, she acted in the controversial drama Last Summer, which was based on Evan Hunter's eponymous novel. In this film, Hershey played Sandy, the "heavy" who influences two young men (played by Bruce Davison and Richard Thomas) to rape another girl, Rhoda (played by Catherine Burns). Though the film, directed by Frank Perry, received an X rating for the graphic rape scene, Burns earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

During the filming of Last Summer, a seagull was killed. "In one scene," Hershey explained, "I had to throw the bird in the air to make her fly. We had to reshoot the scene over and over again. I could tell the bird was tired. Finally, when the scene was finished, the director, Frank Perry, told me the bird had broken her neck on the last throw." Hershey felt responsible for the bird's death and changed her stage name to "Seagull" as a tribute to the creature. "I felt her spirit enter me," she later explained. "It was the only moral thing to do." The name change was not positively received. When she was offered a part opposite Timothy Bottoms in The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder (1974) (or Vrooder's Hooch), Hershey had to forfeit half her salary, $25,000, to be billed under the name "Seagull" because the producers were not in favor of the billing.

1970s

In 1970, Hershey played Tish Grey in The Baby Maker, a film that explored surrogate motherhood. Criticizing the directing and writing of James Bridges, critic Shirley Rigby said of the "bizarre" film, "Only the performances in the film save it from being a total travesty." Rigby went on to say, "Barbara Hershey is a great little actress, much, much more than just another pretty face."

Hershey once said that starring in Boxcar Bertha (1972) "was the most fun I ever had on a movie." The film, co-starring Hershey's domestic partner, David Carradine, and produced by Roger Corman, was Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood picture. Shot in six weeks on a budget of $600,000, Boxcar Bertha was intended to be a period crime drama similar to Corman's Bloody Mama (1970) or Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Although Corman publicized it as an exploitation piece with plenty of sex and violence, Scorsese's influence made it "something much more". Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote of the film's direction, "Martin Scorsese has gone for mood and atmosphere more than for action, and his violence is always blunt and unpleasant—never liberating and exhilarating, as the New Violence is supposed to be." A pictorial recreating sexually explicit scenes from the movie appeared in Playboy magazine in 1972.

Hershey's experience with Scorsese was extended to another major role for her 16 years later in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) as Mary Magdalene. During the filming of Boxcar Bertha, Hershey had introduced Scorsese to the Nikos Kazantzakis novel on which the latter film was based. That collaboration resulted in an Academy Award nomination for the director and a Golden Globe nod for Hershey.

By the mid-1970s, Hershey concluded, "I've been so tied up with David [Carradine] that people have forgotten that I am me. I spend 50 percent of my time working with David." She had, in 1974, guest-starred in a two-part episode of Carradine's television series Kung Fu. She played, under the direction of Carradine, a love interest to his character, Kwai Chang Caine, during his time at the Shaolin temple. She also appeared in two of Carradine's independent directorial projects, You and Me (1975) and Americana (1983), both of which had been filmed in 1973. Her father, Arnold Herzstein, also appeared in Americana.

She publicly acknowledged the desire to be recognized in her own right. Later, in 1974, she did just that, winning a gold medal at the Atlanta Film Festival for her role in the Dutch-produced film Love Comes Quietly.

Later in the decade, Hershey starred with Charlton Heston in The Last Hard Men (1976). She hoped the film would revive her career after the damage she felt it had suffered while she was with Carradine, believing that the hippie label she had been given was a career impediment. By this time, she had shed Carradine and her "Seagull" pseudonym. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, however, she was appearing in made-for-TV movies that were described as "forgettable", like Flood! (1976), Sunshine Christmas (1977), and The Glitter Palace (1977), in which she played a lesbian.

1980s

Barbara Hershey in a publicity still from 1981

Hershey landed a role in Richard Rush's The Stunt Man (1980), marking a return to the big screen after four years and earning her critical praise. Hershey felt that she would be forever in debt to Rush for fighting with financiers to allow her a part in that film. She also felt The Stunt Man was an important transition for her, from playing girls to playing women.

Some of the "women roles" that followed The Stunt Man included the horror movie The Entity (1982); Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (1983), in which she played Glennis Yeager, wife of test pilot Chuck Yeager; and The Natural (1984), in which she shot Robert Redford's character, inspired by a real-life incident where Ruth Ann Steinhagen shot ballplayer Eddie Waitkus. For the role of Harriet Bird, Hershey had chosen a particular hat as her "anchor". Director Barry Levinson disagreed with her choice, but she insisted on wearing it. Levinson later cast Hershey as the wife of Danny DeVito's character in the comedy Tin Men (1987).

In 1986, Hershey left her native California and moved with her son to Manhattan. Three days later, she met briefly with Woody Allen, who offered her the role of Lee in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). In addition to a Manhattan apartment, Hershey bought an antique home in rural Connecticut. The Allen picture won three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe. The film also earned Hershey a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She described her part as "a wonderful gift".

Hershey followed Hannah and Her Sisters with back-to-back wins for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Shy People and for her appearance as anti-apartheid activist Diana Roth in A World Apart (1988). Her character in the latter film was based on Ruth First. Also in the 1980s, she portrayed Errol Flynn's first wife, actress Lili Damita, in the TV movie adaptation of My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985), which was based on Flynn's autobiography. She also played the love interest to Gene Hackman's character in the basketball film Hoosiers (1986).

Barbara Cloud of the Pittsburgh Press gave attribution to Hershey for starting a trend when she had collagen injected into her lips for her role in Beaches (1988). Humorist Erma Bombeck said of the movie, which also starred Bette Midler, "I have no idea what Beaches was all about. All I could focus on was Barbara Hershey's lips. She looked like she stopped off at a gas station and someone said, 'Your lips are down 30 pounds. Better let me hit 'em with some air.'"

1990s

In 1990, Hershey won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special for her role as Candy Morrison in A Killing in a Small Town, which was based on Candy Montgomery's acquittal for the death of Betty Gore. Montgomery had killed Gore on Friday, June 13, 1980, in Gore's Wylie, Texas, home, by hitting her 41 times with an ax. The jury determined that she did so in self-defense. In preparation for the part, Hershey had a phone conversation with Montgomery. Many of the names of the real-life principals in the case were changed for the movie. The film's alternative title was Evidence of Love, the name of a 1984 book about the case.

Also in 1990, Hershey drew upon what Woody Allen once described as her "erotic overtones", portraying a woman who falls in love with her much younger nephew by marriage, played by Keanu Reeves, in the comedic Tune in Tomorrow.

In 1991, Hershey played Hanna Trout, the wife of the title character in Paris Trout (1991), a made-for-cable television movie. In this Showtime production, Hershey collaborated again with A Killing in a Small Town director Stephen Gyllenhaal to play a woman who has an affair with her husband's lawyer. Her husband, an abusive bigot (played by Dennis Hopper), is on trial for murdering a young African American girl. The film, which was based on Pete Dexter's 1988 National Book Award-winning novel, featured Hopper and Hershey enacting a graphic rape scene that the actress found difficult to view. The picture was described as a "dramatic reach deep into the dark hollows of racism, abuse and murder." Paris Trout was nominated for five Prime Time Emmy Awards, including nods for both Hershey and Hopper.

Later in the year, Hershey played an attorney defending her college roommate for the murder of her husband in the suspenseful whodunit Defenseless (1991).

Because of her frequent television appearances, by the end of 1991, Hershey was accused of "selling out to the small screen". In 1992, Hershey appeared with Jane Alexander in the ABC miniseries Stay the Night (1992), prompting Associated Press writer Jerry Buck to write, "Barbara Hershey is a person who jumps back and forth between features and television very easily." She starred in another TV miniseries in 1993, succeeding Anjelica Huston as Clara Allen in the sequel series Return to Lonesome Dove. She was nominated for a Golden Satellite Award for another TV appearance, The Staircase (1998). Between 1999 and 2000, she played Dr. Francesca Alberghetti in 22 season-six episodes of the medical TV drama Chicago Hope.

Hershey co-starred with Joe Pesci as a nightclub owner in the film drama The Public Eye (1992) and as the abused estranged wife of a homicidal Michael Douglas in the thriller Falling Down (1993). Among the other feature films in which she appeared during the 1990s was Jane Campion's adaptation of the Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady (1996). Hershey earned an Oscar nomination and won the Best Supporting Actress award from the National Society of Film Critics for her role as Madame Serena Merle in that picture. In 1995, Last of the Dogmen, co-starring Tom Berenger, was released through Savoy Pictures. In 1999, Hershey starred in an independent film called Drowning on Dry Land; during production she met co-star Naveen Andrews, with whom she began a romantic relationship that lasted until 2010.

2000s

In 2001, Hershey appeared in the psychological thriller Lantana. She was the only American in a mostly Australian cast, which included Kerry Armstrong, Anthony LaPaglia, and Geoffrey Rush. Film writer Sheila Johnson said the film was "one of the best to emerge from Australia in years." Another thriller followed: 11:14 (2003) also featured Rachael Leigh Cook, Patrick Swayze, Hilary Swank, and Colin Hanks. In 2002, she appeared in a two-scene cameo role as the Contessa in the mini-series, Daniel Deronda.

Hershey continued to appear on television during the 2000s, including a season on the series The Mountain. In 2008, she replaced Megan Follows in the role of Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, the fourth in a series of made-for-TV films based on the character.

2010s

Hershey appeared as an American actress, Mrs. Hubbard, in an adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express for the British television series Poirot (starring David Suchet), which aired in the United States on Public Broadcast Service in July 2010. Also in 2010, Hershey co-starred in Darren Aronofsky's acclaimed psychological thriller Black Swan (2010) opposite Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. The following year, she co-starred in the James Wan horror film Insidious (2011). From 2012 to 2013, she had a recurring role in the first two seasons of ABC's hit drama Once Upon a Time as Cora, the Queen of Hearts and mother of the Evil Queen. In 2014, she reprised the role in one episode of the show's spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. In 2015, she once more reprised the role when she returned to the show for an episode of its fourth season, and in 2016, she appeared again for two episodes of the show's fifth season, most notably its landmark 100th episode.

In A&E's series Damien, Hershey portrayed series regular Ann Rutledge, the world's most powerful woman, who has been given the task to make sure Damien fulfills his destiny as the Antichrist. The role marks Hershey's most recent TV gig following Once Upon a Time, The Mountain, Chicago Hope, and Lifetime's Left to Die TV movie.

2020s

Hershey's more recent films include The Manor (2021) and 9 Bullets (2022).

Personal life

Hershey at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 13, 2010

In 1968, Hershey met David Carradine while they were working on Heaven with a Gun. The pair began a domestic relationship that lasted until 1975. Carradine said that during the rape scene in that movie, he cracked one of Barbara's ribs. They appeared in other films together including Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha. In 1972, the couple posed together in a nude Playboy spread, recreating some sex scenes from Boxcar Bertha.

On October 6, 1972, Hershey gave birth to their son, Free, who changed his name to Tom when he was nine years old. The relationship fell apart around the time of Carradine's 1974 burglary arrest, after he had begun an affair with Season Hubley, who had guest-starred in Kung Fu.

During this period, Hershey changed her stage name to "Seagull". In 1979, a blunt newspaper article from the Knight News Service referenced this period of her life, saying of her acting career that "it looked as if she blew it." The article referred to Hershey as a "kook" and stated that she was frequently "high on something". In addition to that criticism, she had been ostracized for breast-feeding her son during an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, and for breast-feeding him beyond the age of two years.

She said that this period of her life hurt her career: "Producers wouldn't see me because I had a reputation for using drugs and being undependable. I never used drugs at all and I have always been serious about my acting career." After splitting up with Carradine, she changed her stage name back to "Hershey", explaining that she had told the story of why she adopted the name "Seagull" so many times that it had lost its meaning.

By the time Hershey was 42, she was described by columnist Luaina Lee as a "private person who was mired in some heavy publicity when she first became a professional actress." Yardena Arar, writing for the Los Angeles Daily News, confirmed that Hershey had become a private person by 1990.

On August 8, 1992, Hershey married artist Stephen Douglas. The ceremony took place at her home in Oxford, Connecticut, where the only guests were their two mothers and Hershey's then 19-year-old son, Tom (né Free) Carradine. The couple separated and divorced one year after the wedding.

Hershey began dating actor Naveen Andrews in 1999. During a brief separation in 2005, Andrews fathered a child with another woman. In May 2010, after Andrews won sole custody of his son, the couple announced that they had ended their 10-year relationship six months earlier.

Filmography

Film

Year Title Role Notes
1968 With Six You Get Eggroll Stacey Iverson Her film debut
1969 Heaven with a Gun Leloopa
Last Summer Sandy
1970 The Liberation of L.B. Jones Nella Mundine
The Baby Maker Tish Gray
1971 The Pursuit of Happiness Jane Kauffman
1972 Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues Susan
Boxcar Bertha Boxcar Bertha
1973 Love Comes Quietly Angela
1974 The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder Zanni
1975 Diamonds Sally
1976 The Last Hard Men Susan Burgade
Trial by Combat Marion Evans
1980 The Stunt Man Nina Franklin
1981 Americana Jess's daughter
Take This Job and Shove It J.M. Halstead
1982 The Entity Carla Moran
1983 The Right Stuff Glennis Yeager
1984 The Natural Harriet Bird
1986 Hannah and Her Sisters Lee Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress
Hoosiers Myra Fleener
1987 Tin Men Nora Tilley
Shy People Ruth Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress
Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
1988 A World Apart Diana Roth Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress
Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress
The Last Temptation of Christ Mary Magdalene Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
Beaches Hillary Whitney Essex
1990 Tune in Tomorrow Aunt Julia
1991 Paris Trout Hanna Trout Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
Defenseless Thelma "T.K." Knudsen Katwuller
1992 The Public Eye Kay Levitz
1993 Falling Down Elizabeth "Beth" Travino
Swing Kids Frau Müller
Splitting Heirs Duchess Lucinda
A Dangerous Woman Frances
1995 Last of the Dogmen Prof. Lillian Diane Sloan
1996 The Pallbearer Ruth Abernathy
The Portrait of a Lady Madame Serena Merle Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress
1998 Frogs for Snakes Eva Santana
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries Marcella Willis
1999 Breakfast of Champions Celia Hoover
Passion Rose Grainger
Drowning on Dry Land Kate
2001 Lantana Dr. Valerie Somers
2003 11:14 Norma
2004 Riding the Bullet Jean Parker
2007 The Bird Can't Fly Melody
Love Comes Lately Rosalie
2008 Nick Nolte: No Exit Herself Documentary
Uncross the Stars Hilda
Childless Natalie
2009 Albert Schweitzer [de] Helene Schweitzer
2010 Black Swan Erica Sayers / The Queen Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Nominated—Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Insidious Lorraine Lambert
2011 Answers to Nothing Marilyn
2013 Insidious: Chapter 2 Lorraine Lambert
2014 Sister Susan Presser
2016 The 9th Life of Louis Drax Violet
2018 Insidious: The Last Key Lorraine Lambert Voice
2021 The Manor Judith Albright
2022 9 Bullets Lacey
2023 Insidious: The Red Door Lorraine Lambert Archive footage and photos

Television films

Year Title Role Notes
1976 Flood! Mary Cutler
1977 In the Glitter Palace Ellen Lange
Just a Little Inconvenience Nikki Klausing
Sunshine Christmas Cody Blanks
1979 A Man Called Intrepid Madelaine
1980 Angel on My Shoulder Julie
1982 Twilight Theatre Various
1985 My Wicked, Wicked Ways:
The Legend of Errol Flynn
Lili Damita
1986 Passion Flower Julia Gaitland
1990 A Killing in a Small Town Candy Morrison Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
1992 Stay the Night Jimmie Sue Finger
1993 Abraham Sarah
1998 The Staircase Mother Madalyn Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film
2003 Hunger Point Marsha Hunger
The Stranger Beside Me Ann Rule
2004 Paradise Elizabeth Paradise
2008 Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning Older Anne Shirley
2012 Left to Die Sandra Chase

Television

Year Title Role Notes
1965–1966 Gidget Ellen 2 episodes
1966 Gidget Karen Episode: "Love and the Single Gidget"
The Farmer's Daughter Lucy 2 episodes
Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre Casey Holloway Episode: "Holloway's Daughters"
1966–1967 The Monroes Kathy Monroe Main role
1967 Daniel Boone Dinah Hubbard Episode: "The King's Shilling"
1968 Run for Your Life Saro-Jane Episode: "Saro-Jane, You Never Whispered Again"
The Invaders Beth Ferguson Episode: "The Miracle"
The High Chaparral Moonfire Episode: "The Peacemaker"
1970 Insight Judy Episode: "The Whole Damn Human Race and One More"
1973 Love Story Farrell Edwards Episode: "The Roller Coaster Stops Here"
1974 Kung Fu Nan Chi 2 episodes
1980 From Here to Eternity Karen Holmes Episode: "Pearl Harbor"
1982 American Playhouse Lenore Episode: "Weekend"
1983 Faerie Tale Theatre The Maid Episode: "The Nightingale"
1985 Alfred Hitchcock Presents Jessie Dean Episode: "Wake Me When I'm Dead"
1993 Return to Lonesome Dove Clara Allen 3 episodes
1999–2000 Chicago Hope Dr. Francesca Alberghetti Main role
2002 Daniel Deronda Contessa Maria Alcharisi Episode: "1.3"
2004–2005 The Mountain Gennie Carver Main role
2010 Agatha Christie's Poirot Caroline Hubbard Episode: "Murder on the Orient Express"
2012–2016 Once Upon a Time Cora Mills/Queen of Hearts season 2 Recurring role, guest in season 1,4,5 (15 episodes)
2014 Once Upon a Time in Wonderland Cora Mills/Queen of Hearts Episode: "Heart of the Matter"
2016 Damien Ann Rutledge Main role
2018 The X-Files Erika Price 3 episodes
2020 Paradise Lost Byrd Forsythe Main role
2023 Beacon 23 Sophie S01E04 Episode - God in the Machine

Awards and nominations


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